THE EX-SLAVE AS HE IS.
The main outlines of the rights of the negro in the United States are
laid down in Amendments XIII., XIV., and XV. to the American
Constitution. Says Amendment XIII., “Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.” Says Amendment XIV., “All persons born
or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.” And, says Amendment XV., “The right of the
citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States, or any State, on account of race, colour, or previous
condition of servitude.” Such is roughly the American charter of the
black and coloured man’s liberties.
The Civil Rights Bill, passed by Congress in 1875, went further, and, as
I have said, declared that “All persons within the jurisdiction of the
United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the
accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privilege of inns, public
conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of amusement,
subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and
applicable alike to citizens of every race and colour, regardless of any
previous condition of servitude.” But this measure was held by the
United States Supreme Court to be unconstitutional; and I only again
cite its first section here in order to show, in all completeness, what
the negro in America wants and is struggling for, and what his most
enthusiastic friends in the North would give him if they had it in their
power to give.
It is because he is not given these rights, and because some of the
rights which are given to him in law are withheld from him in practice,
that the Race Question is to-day one of towering importance in America.
If the American white were able to frankly make up his mind to accept
the negro as in all respects his political and social equal, the whole
question would vanish, and the two races might, in course of time,
become one. But the American white, it is absolutely certain, will never
adopt this solution of the difficulty. He will not frankly accept the
negro as his equal at the polls, in society, in the court of law, or in
the school. He holds that the negro is physically and intellectually
inferior in the scale of humanity; and he points, with a gesture that
forbids argument, to the differences that exist between the Caucasian
and the Caucasian’s “brother in black.”
Am I, he asks, to admit my equality with a being who more nearly
approaches the quadrumana than does any other member of the human
family; with a being whose arms are, on an average, two inches longer
than mine? Am I to admit my equality with a being whose facial angle is
about 70 deg., while mine is about 82 deg.? Am I to admit my equality
with a being the average weight of whose brain is ten ounces less than
that of people of my own family? Is it a matter of insignificance that
he is black while I am white; that his eyes have a yellowish sclerotic
coat; that his nose is short, depressed, and dilated; that he has high
and prominent cheek-bones; that his cranium is much thicker than mine;
that he has a low instep and a “lark heel”; that his head is covered not
with hair but with wool of nearly flat section; that his skin is thicker
than mine, and that, it is velvety and emits a characteristic odour;
that his frame, owing to structural peculiarities, is not as erect as
mine; or that the cranial sutures of the negro close up much earlier
than those of the white man?
[Illustration: FACIAL ANGLES OF THE WHITE AND NEGRO RACES.]
These points of difference, and many more, are ever before the eye and
in the mind of the American white in the South. I am not concerned to
say whether or not the white man pays exaggerated attention to them. I
can only declare that, influenced, rightly or wrongly, by his
observations and his prejudices, the white Southerner has impregnably
determined that, in spite of anything that Constitutional Amendments and
State legislation may hint to the contrary, the negro on American soil
occupies an inferior position, and that he must never be allowed to
trespass beyond it.
I have already incidentally mentioned that the illegal repression of the
black is openly defended by Americans who, in the ordinary affairs of
life, take rank as men of honour. Mr. George William Curtis, writing in
_Harper’s Weekly_ in June, 1887, said:—
“What is the Southern question? It is essentially one of the gravest
and most vital that can concern any community, for it is substantially
the question whether where the coloured vote is largely in the
majority, and is cast all together, the community shall be placed
under the government of its most ignorant class, recently emancipated
from a dehumanising slavery, and led by unscrupulous chiefs. The
pitiless cruelty of slavery was not a good school for the exercise of
political supremacy in an otherwise highly civilised community, and
the situation in some parts of the Southern States is one which, could
it be reproduced in the Northern States, would not be tolerated.
Relief would be sought and found under law or over law, and that is
what is done in such communities in the Southern States. There is
plainly a deprivation of rights conferred by law. But would any humane
and intelligent Republican say that the power of the United States
should be employed to compel submission to an endless rule like that
of Moses in South Carolina?”
And the Boston _Herald_, one of the most respectable of Northern
newspapers, candidly tells its New England readers that if they lived in
the South they would entertain the same views about the negroes as the
Southern whites do. It explains very thoroughly the race prejudice,
which is prevalent with all white races, and particularly with the
Anglo-Saxon, and which has kept the Anglo-Saxon race pure and has
preserved its institutions, civilisation, and free government. Says the
_Herald_ on this subject:—
“The treatment accorded to coloured races by white men, especially
representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race, has never been of a kind to
call forth commendations, and yet it may be said that this almost
universal display of inhumanity indicates that it is a necessary
feature of race development. Our Western countrymen believe that the
only good Indian is a dead Indian; our Southern countrymen believe
that the negro is a person who cannot be allowed political and social
equality, but must be kept in an inferior condition. We in the North,
who have nothing to fear from Indians and with whom the negro is an
exception, raise our voices in protest at such barbarity. And yet our
forefathers, who were, perhaps, quite as conscientious persons as we
are, did not hesitate to undertake a war of extermination against the
Indians, and they even held views concerning the negro quite different
from those which we entertain.
“In fact, human nature is such that the chances are altogether in
favour of the supposition that, if the people of New England could be
transported to the North-Western States and Territories, and our
fellow-citizens of those districts brought back to New England, we
should soon have those who now entertain philanthropic views
concerning the Indians crying out for their speedy extermination,
while those who now regard them as obstacles to civilisation, to be
brushed out of the way as soon as possible, would come, looking at
them from a perspective of 2,000 miles, to regard them as men and
brothers, deserving of kind and equitable treatment. We dare say that
the removal of the white people of the North to the Southern States
and the transfer of the Southern people to the north of Mason and
Dixon’s line would be attended with the same reversal of opinions
respecting the negro question—that is, the manner in which these race
problems are regarded is largely a matter of geographical location.”
The Atlanta _Constitution_ thus excuses the attitude of the whites. Is
there, it asks, a State in the North in which if, as in Mississippi,
181,000 negro voters, of whom 145,000 are unable to read or write, were
to-day settled, the white people would be or could be divided under any
pretence or by any power? Is there a Northern State in which, although,
as in Mississippi, there were only 121,000 white voters to oppose them,
this host of black illiterates could capture and maintain the control of
affairs under any pretext or by any power? Could this be done in
Indiana, or in Ohio, and especially could it be done if, as in
Mississippi, the hideous and sickening pages of the carpet-bag era, by
showing what these people did do when the whites were united against
them, gave appalling suggestions of what they would do if the whites
were divided? Iowa has about the voting population of Georgia, say
320,000. If 130,000 of these voters were negroes, of whom 100,000 were
illiterate (to say no worse), is there any sane man who believes, or any
fair man who will assert, that the white people of Iowa would not so
unite as to hold control of their affairs, and remain so united, in all
despite? Would any political ambition, or could any external force, so
divide the whites as to make it possible for a considerable minority of
their number, by deluding the ignorant and bribing the corrupt of the
negroes, to hold the reins of government?
Nor can it be denied that, in practice, many of the most negrophil
Northerners have as little as possible to do with the black, and,
indeed, systematically treat him as an inferior. A Republican Congress
twenty years ago forced negro suffrage upon the South, and at the same
time established it in the District of Columbia. Six years’ experience
of it in Columbia was sufficient, and to get rid of it a Republican
Congress obliterated suffrage altogether there, amid the hearty amens of
Republican property holders in Washington. There are three Senators now
in Congress—Messrs. Edmunds and Morrill, of Vermont, and Mr. Sherman, of
Ohio—who twenty years ago assisted might and main to burden the South
with negro suffrage. These three are among the foremost in advocating
Southern fairness towards the negro. Indeed, Mr. Sherman is the author
of a proposition in this direction which for stringency goes far ahead
of anything previously suggested. Yet all three of these Senators, who
are large property holders in Washington, voted to disestablish negro
suffrage in Washington fifteen years ago, and not one of them would for
one moment listen to any suggestion to revive it.
The attitude of the Southern white towards the negro is, nevertheless,
not exactly an unkind one. It is rather that of a magisterial guardian.
Within certain limits, the negro is no longer “kept down.” Far from
seeking to condemn him to ignorance and stagnation, the white man
contributes, and contributes generously, to the negro’s mental,
physical, and moral advancement. He freely provides his ex-slave with
facilities for education, with medical care in seasons of sickness, and
with opportunities for religious instruction. Indeed, in these
directions, he does for the black man a great many good deeds which the
black man never dreams of trying to do for himself. But this is, I
think, mainly because the white systematically regards the black as a
child. And in this the white is certainly justified. No one who has
associated much with the negro race can have failed to have remarked
that in the natural time of childhood the negro is apparently as
vivacious and as intelligent as the white. With the approach of puberty,
however, the two races begin to betray marked intellectual divergence.
The white steadily progresses in intelligence; the black stops short; so
that, a few years afterwards, the latter is by comparison dull, stupid,
and indolent, though still frivolous, affectionate, good-natured, and
mischievous. I speak, of course, of the average negro, and more
especially of the full-blooded one. There are exceptions, but they are
few. As a rule the grown negro, even if he have received a better
education than the majority of his fellows, is in mind always a child.
The uneducated grown negro is invariably of this characteristic nature;
and he is often charmingly simple and devoid of evil. But, on the other
hand, he is quite as often full of the worst vices and passions. Into
this, however, I will not go at present, my immediate purpose being
rather to show how the negro is treated by his white fellow-citizens
than to indicate the effect that is being produced upon the South by the
existence in it of an enormous, and in many localities an overwhelming,
negro population.
According to law, the American negro has at the polls exactly the same
rights and privileges as the American white man. But the concession was
made to the negro without the full and free consent of the Southern
white, and in consequence the Southern white has always grudged it, and
has very rarely allowed it to be fully exercised. There was a time, as I
have endeavoured to show, when the Southern white was prevented by
_force majeure_ from greatly interfering with the negro’s action at the
ballot-boxes; but since the days of Reconstruction the Southern white
man has been supreme in his own States, and his will has ever been that
the negro shall not be a significant factor in politics. At first the
white enforced his will with the rifle and the revolver. In many places
the negro could not approach the ballot-box without risking his life,
and so he stayed away. There were “rifle clubs,” and, in Texas and
Virginia, there was the Ku-Klux Klan, an organisation of whites of good
position who were determined, no matter how much blood it might cost, to
make the coloured people “behave themselves.” Then followed the less
violent but not less reprehensible recourse to “tissue-ballots.” “Let
the negroes vote if they will,” was the word; “we will stultify their
action by fraud, which is safer than force.” And so it happened that, as
in South Carolina, although the negro majority trooped to the polls and
voted Republican to a man, the returning officers found that, almost
without exception, the men who were elected were Democrats.
The infamous trick was easily managed. In America the voter is, in most
places, required to register, and to produce his registration
certificate upon recording his vote. He votes by depositing in the
ballot-box a printed ticket, or ballot. This ticket simply bears the
names of the favoured candidates for vacant offices, and, although it
now has to be of certain prescribed dimensions and colour, its form used
to be very much dependent upon the tastes and idiosyncrasies of the
party leaders who supplied it to the electors. In the “tissue-ballot”
days fraudulent party leaders caused it to be printed upon the very
thinnest of tissue-paper, so that the thickness of, say, twenty-five
tissue-tickets did not much exceed that of an ordinary piece of
writing-paper. These tickets were entrusted to unscrupulous voters of
the right political complexion. The ballots, before being deposited, had
to be folded, but only lightly folded; and thus, when an expert
fraudulent voter folded his twenty-five tissue-tickets together and gave
them a gentle flip as he dropped them into the box, the papers flew open
and apart, and at once assumed a comparatively innocent appearance. Upon
the close of the poll the ballots were counted and their number was
compared with that of the registered electors who had voted at that
booth. There was found to be a large excess of ballots; whereupon all
the papers were returned to the box, and an election manager, in
accordance with precedent, undertook the duty of withdrawing sufficient
ballots to make the remainder tally with the number of voters who had
polled. If, as was generally the case, the manager was fraudulent, he
took care to draw out only thick tickets. If, as may have sometimes
happened, he was honest, he took the tickets as they came, thick and
thin indifferently. But in either event the party that used
“tissue-ballots” naturally gained an immense advantage. If the
negroes—against whom almost exclusively this device was
employed—suspected and protested, revolvers were exhibited by the other
side.
Such a revelation as this may appear incredible to British readers, but
it by no means exhausts the villainies of American politics as they are
displayed at the polls, even at this day; and Americans themselves seem
to accept such things as matters of course. Mr. John James Ingalls, one
of the United States Senators for Kansas, excited no great surprise or
repulsion when he recently declared, “The purification of politics is an
iridescent dream; the Decalogue and the Golden Rule have no place in a
political campaign.” Mr. Ingalls is a Republican. Republicans, however,
it is but fair to say, are not monopolists of fraud. A normally
respectable Southern newspaper, the Charleston _News and Courier_,
during the last campaign, coolly gave to its readers the following
conspicuously printed piece of advice:—“Go to the polls to-day. Vote
early, vote often, vote straight.” (November 4, 1890.) And I am bound to
admit that the counsel was acted upon. But of that anon.
Concurrently with the use of “tissue-ballots,” the practices of
“counting in” and “counting out” were resorted to, or, in other words,
false returns were made. Again, the registration certificates of the
ignorant and often careless coloured voters were frequently stolen or
purchased for ridiculous sums by whites. The regular price used to be
fifty cents, or a pint of whisky.
Another favourite device was, and still is, deception. The majority of
coloured voters cannot read, and since, at most American elections,
there are several “tickets” to be voted for—as, for example, a State
ticket, a county or municipal ticket, and a Federal ticket—there is
generally plenty of opportunity for Sambo to go wrong. With the
assistance of a learned friend, he selects such tickets as he may, in
his political wisdom, desire to deposit. He also assures himself as to
the relative positions of the various ballot-boxes in the booth. Then,
with the State ticket between his forefinger and thumb, the county
ticket between his forefinger and second finger, and the Federal ticket
between his second and third fingers, and in the happy belief that the
State box is on the extreme right, the county box in the middle, and the
Federal box on the extreme left, he enters the booth to do his civic
duty. In the meantime the managers inside have deliberately changed the
position of the boxes. They are legally bound to indicate each box if
they be asked to do so; but, even if they comply with the letter of the
requirement, Sambo inevitably gets his papers confused, and ends by
depositing them wrongly, and so spoils his vote. In practice, the
managers, as often as not, either do not indicate the boxes or indicate
them wrongly. They are all labelled, but when Sambo is illiterate the
labels are meaningless to him.
In a speech delivered on July 30th, 1888, Governor John P. Richardson,
of South Carolina, openly and frankly defended this practice. Said he:—
“The great problem which God has given us to solve is not yet solved.
We have now the rule of a minority of four hundred thousand over a
majority of six hundred thousand. No army at Austerlitz, Waterloo, or
Gettysburg could ever be wielded like that mass of six hundred
thousand people. The only thing which stands to-day between us and
their rule is a flimsy statute—the _eight-box law_—which depends for
its effectiveness upon the unity of the white people.”
In a speech delivered a few days later Governor Richardson again
declared:—
“But there is one thing more which the Democracy has to do, and that
is to solve the problem of how a minority of four hundred thousand
people shall rule for the advancement of the State and the people at
large. There are to-day many people who think that the eight-box law
could be disposed of, but I tell you that on it depends the salvation
of the State. It amounts to an educational qualification for suffrage.
None of us can forget the election trials which took place in this
city, when a native South Carolinian was the prosecutor against his
own people. But if he was the Cicero, we had yet the Demosthenes to
meet him, and the gifted Youmans arose, and we saved our comrades by
the skin of their teeth. Be careful, my friends, of the eight-box law.
Some have said that we could control by simple Anglo-Saxon manhood,
but this is only a beautiful theory, and would be dangerous in
practice. I have an abiding faith in the onward progress of humanity,
and I believe it is the eternal law of God that this land shall be
controlled by the Anglo-Saxon race.”
The _eight-box law_ is the statute which provides a separate box for
each ticket, township, county, State, Congressional, Electoral, &c.
Every voter must approach these boxes alone, and no one, unless asked,
is allowed to tell him where a particular ticket belongs. If he cannot
read he cannot, without assistance, distribute his tickets, and, by the
law, all that are put into the wrong box are void.
Senator Eustis, of Louisiana, at about the same time publicly asserted
that the whites of Louisiana, in spite of the law, would rule by might,
and as for the rest of the country it was none of Louisiana’s business.
The vulgar devices of making voters drunk and of temporarily restraining
their personal liberty are not wholly neglected; but these are
troublesome methods, and the easier ones are found by experience to have
all the hoped-for effect. Indeed, in many districts, the negro now seems
to recognise that his vote, should he deposit it, will not be allowed to
count, and he therefore stays at home. In other districts he votes
still; but the whole business is a sad farce. And of this I have some
personal knowledge.
On November 4th, 1890, I was present at a voting place at Mount
Pleasant in South Carolina. The whites were voting for Tillman, the
Farmers’ Alliance candidate, for Governor. A small dissentient body of
whites and the whole body of negroes were voting for Haskell, the
Democratic-Republican Coalition candidate. The district is a very
black one, one of the blackest in the State, and its vote was much
counted upon by the Haskell party. Overnight, therefore, the
Tillmanites tried, but in vain, to destroy the booth; and on the day
of the election they adopted a modification of the old “tissue-ballot”
trick, using, however, ordinary instead of tissue-ballots. Two hundred
and forty-four persons voted at this particular booth. When one of the
boxes was opened it was found to contain a largely excessive number of
ballots; the exact number was, if I recollect rightly, 477. The
surplus 233 papers were cast out by the managers, some of whom were
shrewdly suspected of being parties to the conspiracy, and the result
of the poll in that precinct was decided by the verdict of the
remainder. Nor was this the only villainy that was perpetrated on that
day in the neighbourhood. In an adjoining precinct a Tillman champion
named Gaillard seized and destroyed the registration books, thus
rendering the polling impossible in default of duplicate books.
Ballot-boxes, too, are sometimes destroyed or made away with. Indeed,
there is no conceivable scoundrelism that is not, or has not been,
practised in the South to neutralise the negro vote.
From what I have written it will be clear that the extension of the
suffrage to the coloured race in the Southern States by no means ensures
the representation of the black man. The situation is a very disgraceful
one for the Southern whites; but even the better class of Southern
politicians with whom I have conversed upon the subject tacitly, if not
expressly, defend, as with one voice, the iniquitous system. “We
cannot,” they say, “be ruled by the negroes; we must protect ourselves.
It is very lamentable; but what is the alternative?”
It is hard to suggest a practicable one, for the fatal and irretrievable
mistake of bestowing the suffrage upon every male citizen of full age
has already been made. That mistake is recognised as such not only by
the Democrats, not only by the whites. Senator Ingalls, whom I have
already spoken of as a Republican, wrote in the _North American Review_,
in April, 1886:—“Had the Republican party been courageous or intelligent
enough to have attempted the reconstruction of the South through its
brains rather than through its numbers, the most lamentable chapter in
our history might have been unwritten.” And Mr. A. M. E. Church, an
intelligent coloured clergyman of Vicksburg, wrote, in the same
year:—“We will say ... that the mass of negroes would do themselves and
their country more good if the ballot were out of their reach.”
Congress has it in its power to limit the suffrage; but at this time of
day it will not exercise that power, which, by the way, ought never to
have been taken out of the hands of individual States. The situation in
Maine, where nearly all the people are white and educated, is not like
the situation in Mississippi, where more than half the people are black
and ignorant. But Congress forgot that fact, and Amendment XV. took from
the States, practically for ever, a wholesome power, which, under sec.
2, Art. 1, of the original Constitution, they had up to that moment been
at liberty to exercise. The repeal of Amendment XV., however, would not
settle, and would, in my humble opinion, scarcely assist, the solution
of the race question. The cause of difficulty lies far deeper; and this,
I think, will appear when I shall have considered the Southern negro in
his social and general, as well as in his political, position, and when
I shall have given some examples of the force of race prejudice in
America.
Throughout the South the social position of the man in whose veins negro
blood courses is unalterably fixed at birth. The child may grow to be
wise, to be wealthy, to be entrusted even with the responsibilities of
office, but he always bears with him the visible marks of his origin,
and those marks condemn him to remain for ever at the bottom of the
social ladder. To incur this condemnation he need not be by any means
black. A quarter, an eighth, nay, a sixteenth of African blood, is
sufficient to deprive him of all chances of social equality with the
white man. For the being with the hated taint there is positively no
social mercy. A white man may be ignorant, vicious, and poor. For him,
in spite of all, the door is ever kept open. But the black, or coloured
man, no matter what his personal merits may be, is ruthlessly shut out.
The white absolutely declines to associate with him on equal terms. A
line has been drawn; and he who, from either side, crosses that line has
to pay the penalty. If it be the negro who dares to cross, cruelty and
violence chase him promptly back again, or kill him for his temerity. If
it be the white, ostracism is the recognised penalty. And it is not only
the uneducated and the easily prejudiced who have drawn the line thus
sharply. Speaking in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said:—
“I am not, and never have been, in favour of bringing about, in any
form, the social and political equality of the white and the black
races. There is a physical difference which forbids them from living
together on terms of social and political equality. And, inasmuch as
they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a
position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am
in favour of having the superior position assigned to the whites.”
Mr. Froude, in “The English in the West Indies,” writes:—
“One does not grudge the black man his property, his freedom, his
opportunity of advancing himself; one would wish him as free and
prosperous as the fates and his own exertions can make him, with more
and more means of raising himself to the white man’s level. But left
to himself, and without the white man to lead him, he can never reach
it.... We have a population to deal with the majority of whom are an
inferior race. Inferior, I am obliged to call them, because as yet
they have shown no capacity to rise above the condition of their
ancestors, except under European laws, European education, and
European authority to keep them from war upon one another.... Give
them independence, and in a few generations they will peel off such
civilisation as they have as easily and as willingly as their coats
and trousers.”
And, says Professor E. W. Gilliam, to whose writings on the subject I
have already made some allusion:—
“The blacks have been, and must continue to be, a distinct and alien
race; the fusion of races is the resultant from social equality and
intermarriage, and the barrier to this is here insurmountable. The
human species presents three grand varieties, marked off by
colour—white, yellow, and black. One at the first, in origin and
colour, the race multiplied and spread, and separate sections, settled
in different latitudes, took on—under climatic conditions acting with
abnormal force in that early and impressionable period of the race’s
age—took on, we say, different hues, which, as the race grew and
hardened, crystallised into permanent characteristics. Social affinity
exists among the families of these three groups. The groups themselves
stand rigidly apart. The Irish, German, French, &c., who come to these
shores readily intermarry among themselves and with the native
population. Within a generation or two the sharpness of national
feature disappears, and the issue is the American, whose mixed blood
is the country’s foremost hope. It cannot be—a fusion like this
between blacks and whites. Account for it as we may, the antipathy is
a palpable fact which no one fails to recognise—an antipathy not less
strong among the Northern than among the Southern whites. However the
former may, on the score of matters political, profess themselves
special friends to the blacks, the question of intermarriage and
social equality, when brought to practical test, they will not touch
with the end of the little finger. Whether it be that the blacks,
because of their former condition of servitude, are regarded as a
permanently degraded class; whether it be that the whites, from their
historic eminence, are possessed with a consciousness of superiority
which spurns alliance—the fact that fusion is impossible no one in his
senses can deny.”
Professor Gilliam wrote from a Southern standpoint, but, says Judge
Albion W. Tourgée: “Looking at the subject from a standpoint
diametrically opposed in every respect both to the intellectual bias and
to the political inclination of Professor Gilliam, we are compelled to
endorse his views in this respect almost without the least
modification.” And in another page of his admirable and informing
volume, “An Appeal to Cæsar,” Mr. Tourgée remarks, “When the freedman
began to establish his own home circle, to build for himself a household
about his own hearth, however humble, the distance between the whites
and blacks, though in fact very greatly diminished, seemed to have been
as greatly increased.”
My own impression, as derived from somewhat wide observation, is that,
since the emancipation, the distance has really as well as apparently
increased, and that it is still increasing. Whites and blacks have less
in common than of yore; there is less chance than there ever was of
their working together peacefully for good; and racial antagonism,
nourished by both sides, grows daily. There are many signs, too, of this
growing antagonism. On the side of the negro there is a desire to be
what the white man is, and to do what the white man does—to elevate
himself to the same level of privileges, with or without the
pre-requisite education and fitness for the elevation. He argues blindly
that the legal right confers the needful fitness. The law opens
positions to him, and he is a voter. Why then should he not vote himself
and his friends into the positions? And education by no means tends to
decrease the friction, seeing that the white man is as prejudiced
against an educated negro as against an ignorant one. On the contrary,
it adds to it. When the uneducated black thinks himself the equal of the
white, the educated black cannot be expected to submit resignedly to be
regarded as the white’s inferior. Yet he is obliged to affect the
resignation which he cannot feel. He must suppress his real sentiments,
or he must risk physical maltreatment.
His social position cannot be properly understood without the aid of
illustrations. I will therefore give a few, which are taken at hazard
from some hundreds of examples that I might cite.
But, as an introduction to this branch of the subject, I must first
quote a passage from Mr. George W. Cable’s recent book, “The Silent
South,” a volume which is inspired from beginning to end with
love—perhaps unwise love—for the negro, and with a desire to do all that
lies in the writer’s power to abate the prevalent race friction. Mr.
Cable asks:—
“Are the freedman’s liberties suffering any real abridgment? The
answer is easy. The letter of the laws, with a few exceptions,
recognises him as entitled to every right of an American citizen; and
to some it may seem unimportant that there is scarcely one public
relation of life in the South where he is not arbitrarily and
unlawfully compelled to hold toward the white man the attitude of an
alien, a menial, and a probable reprobate, by reason of his race and
colour. One of the marvels of future history will be that it was
counted a small matter by a majority of our nation for six millions of
people within it, made by its own decree a component part of it, to be
subjected to a system of oppression so rank that nothing could make it
seem small except the fact that they had already been ground under it
for a century and a half. Examine it. It proffers to the freedman a
certain security of life and property, and then holds the respect of
the community, that dearest of earthly boons, beyond his attainment.
It gives him certain guarantees against thieves and robbers, and then
holds him under the unearned contumely of the mass of good men and
women. It acknowledges in constitutions and statutes his title to an
American’s freedom and aspirations, and then in daily practice heaps
upon him in every public place the most odious distinctions, without
giving ear to the humblest plea concerning mental or moral character.
It spurns his ambition, tramples upon his languishing self-respect,
and indignantly refuses to let him either buy with money, or earn by
any excellence of inner life or outward behaviour, the most momentary
immunity from these public indignities even for his wife and
daughters.”
In America it is a matter of notoriety that there is no exaggeration
here, nor is the race feeling confined solely to the South. To the
British reader the following cases in point will, I believe, prove that
there is no exaggeration:—
“Supposing the Courts of our Southern States, while changing no laws
requiring the impanelling of jurymen without distinction as to race,
&c., should suddenly begin to draw their thousands of jurymen all
black, and well-nigh everyone of them counting not only himself, but
all his race, better than any white man. Assuming that their average
of intelligence and morals should be not below that of jurymen as now
drawn, would a white man, for all that, choose to be tried in one of
those Courts? Would he suspect nothing? Could one persuade him that
his chances of even justice were all they should be, or all they would
be, were the Court not evading the law in order to sustain an
outrageous distinction against him because of the accident of his
birth? Yet, only read white man for black man, and black man for white
man, and that—I speak as an eye-witness—has been the practice for
years, and is still so to-day; an actual emasculation, in the case of
six million people, both as plaintiff and defendant, of the right of
trial by jury.”—MR. G. W. CABLE.
“The negro children of the city are usually the aggressors when
trouble occurs between them and white children. Both colours are too
ready for a row, but coloured parents are too ready to teach their
youngsters that white people are their natural enemies. We daily see
negro boys trying all their ingenuity to get a fight out of the white
boys when the latter try to avoid a row, and this is peculiarly true
when there are two or three young negroes to one white. Negro girls
are apt to be extremely insolent, not only to whites of their own age,
but to ladies. In the matter of collisions between school-boys, that
may best be left to the police. The negro girls who push white women
and girls off the walks can be cured of that practice by the use of a
horsewhip; and we advise white fathers and husbands to use the whip.
It’s a great corrective.”—Chattanooga _Times_.
This advocacy of the summary horsewhipping of girls is very significant
of the brutal attitude of the Southern white towards the negro.
“Between two and three o’clock an excursion train, composed entirely
of coloured people, arrived at Gouldsboro depôt from Bâton Rouge. A
large number of coloured men and women were near the depôt waiting for
the train, which was due at eleven o’clock. As the train neared the
depôt, one of the excursionists attempted to get off and fell to the
ground. Some unknown person made a personal remark, when the negro
drew a pistol and fired four or five shots in rapid succession, one of
which struck a white man named William Miller, brother of one of the
Gretna police, in the nose and lodged itself in the back of his neck.
Then the shooting became general, some four or five hundred shots
being fired in less than fifteen minutes. The stories of the blacks
and whites as to the origin of the trouble differ widely. The negroes
say that a large body of armed white men were awaiting the train’s
arrival, and that about ten minutes after it stopped they opened fire
on the negroes who were going to the street car. The whites say that
only half a dozen white men were concerned in the affair, and that the
negroes, before the train came to a halt, fired two shots at a white
boy named Burmester. Billy Miller was then shot by one of the white
men, and then the fight became general.”—Associated Press Telegram
from New Orleans, September 1st, 1889.
“It is impossible for the negro to get any justice at the hands of
Southern magistrates or juries. A man who resides in Augusta, Ga.—a
Democrat and a hater of the negro—admits that the whites’ maltreatment
of the blacks must one day recoil upon their own heads. ‘Why,’ said he
to me to-day, ‘you can’t convict a white man of the murder of a negro,
nor even of a white friend of the negro. Just before I left home a
negro was found one morning in the street, with his body riddled with
bullets. I was pretty certain that his death was due to a certain gang
of roughs, whose leader is under obligation to me for keeping him out
of the penitentiary. Meeting him I said, “Pat, who killed that
nigger?” “Oh, some of the boys,” said Pat, with a grin. “What did they
do it for?” I asked. “Oh, because he was a nigger,” said Pat. “And,”
he continued, “he was the best nigger in town. Why, he would even take
off his hat to me.”’ I thought he must be a good negro, indeed, who
would take off his hat to that creature, and I walked away pondering
upon what must be the outcome of it all. It is my opinion that several
of the Southern States will have to be abandoned to the negroes if we
would avoid terrible consequences from the wrongs we are heaping on
them.”—Washington correspondence of the Pittsburg _Dispatch_, January
11th, 1890.
“They had an election down in Jackson, Miss., yesterday, and it was of
the usual kind. The regular press reports, with charming frankness,
state that everything was progressing quietly so long as the negroes
stayed away from the polls; but should the black men attempt to
exercise the right of suffrage there would be trouble.”—Philadelphia
_Evening Telegram_, January 7th, 1890.
A negro named William Black stole some trifling articles from the
house of a white man, one Jim Bennett, near Robins, South Carolina.
Bennett followed and caught the negro, and, assisted by Dave Ready,
Henry Sweat, and John Walker, tied the prisoner to a tree. Ready then
placed a gun to the negro’s temple and blew out the man’s brains.
Bennett, Walker, and Sweat were arrested as accessories in the first
degree, but were discharged by Justice Dunbar. Ready apparently
escaped.—Summarised from a Barnwell letter of January 11th, 1890, in
the Charleston _Budget_.
Two boys—Williams, a negro, and Robertson, a white—were playing
together near Waynesboro with a gun, which, being accidentally
discharged, killed Robertson. The negro boy was arrested, but was
taken from custody by a mob of white men, who tied him up and shot him
to death.—Summarised from a despatch from Augusta, Georgia, dated
October 24th, 1890, to the Charleston _News and Courier_.
“A Tennessee white man was hanged on Tuesday for the brutal murder of
his wife. The despatches tell us that he objected to going on the
gallows with three coloured men who were to be hanged at the same
time, and that the authorities so far respected his prejudices as to
swing off the negroes first.”—New York _Star_, January 7th, 1890.
“Some years ago a great revival was going on in one of the churches of
my own city. The evangelist was fervidly inviting all kinds of people
to come to the ‘anxious seat.’ Crowds of men, women, and children were
accepting the invitation. Tramps, drunkards, and beggars were among
the number. At last it was announced to the church officials that a
negro upon one of the back seats was ‘under conviction.’ Here was a
problem of serious import. The officials held a hurried and anxious
consultation, and it was finally decided that the negro might receive
the benefit of salvation in an inconspicuous pew. This case might
fairly be termed exceptional if it were not true that one of the
largest and most influential denominations in the land, having been
split in half by the question of slavery, remains in that condition
to-day solely on the question of colour caste.”—Rev. JOHN SNYDER, in
the _Forum_, October, 1889. (The denomination alluded to is the
American Presbyterian Church.)
“While the Republican whoopers at the North are bursting with
indignation at the fact that the negroes on Southern railroads are
provided with separate cars from those occupied by the whites, they
have not a word of protest against the fact that a daughter of a
Southern negro ex-Governor was ‘frozen’ out of the ball-room of the
Grand Union Hotel at Saratoga a few nights ago. The gathering in the
ball-room was not of persons specially invited, but was made up, as
such watering-place balls usually are, of the guests stopping in the
hotel. The young lady in question is beautiful and accomplished, and
above all moral reproach, and so slightly tinted with negro blood that
she would have passed muster among whites almost anywhere in the
matter of colour. In spite, however, of all the facts in her favour,
the single circumstance of race created, in a crowded assemblage in a
Northern State, a sentiment that immediately culminated in outward
expressions which at once convinced the unfortunate lady that she was
an object of most unfriendly observation on the part of the people
gathered there.”—New Orleans _Picayune_, August 30th, 1889.
“The report comes from South Carolina that a coloured man, unarmed and
defenceless, fell into an altercation with a white man of that State
named Gallman. Gallman slit the coloured man’s throat from ear to ear,
and drove to a neighbour’s house, where he procured a shot-gun, and
emptied the contents of one barrel into the wounded man. At a late
hour that night Mr. Gallman’s friends, hearing that the victim had not
died, although he was at death’s door, rode to where he lay, and
carried him to the nearest churchyard, where they riddled his body
with bullets.”—Boston _Advertiser_, June 2nd, 1889.
“A reporter of the New York _World_ on Saturday disguised himself as a
wealthy negro from Cuba, and went around to the various first class
hotels to secure accommodation for himself. That must have been a busy
day with the hotel people, for the clerks smilingly told him that
every room was engaged. Seeing that it would be impossible to secure a
room, he then tried to get something to eat. At most of the
restaurants the waiters would pay no attention to his orders, and the
cashiers with one accord assured him that the proprietor was out and
would not return until late. At the Hoffman House Café he was given
food, but was not served at the bar. At Delmonico’s he was assured
that they had nothing to eat. So it seems that the prejudice against
the negro is not confined entirely to the South.”—New York _World_,
June, 1888.
Last year Mr. Douglass, a mulatto, was appointed United States
Minister to Hayti, and was taken thither on board an American
man-of-war, the _Kearsage_. Another ship, the _Ossipee_, was first
ordered to convey him. It is alleged that her commander, being
unwilling to carry and associate with a coloured man, urged as an
excuse that his vessel was not fit for sea. The officers of the
_Kearsage_ refused to dine with the Minister. “The army officers are
in a state of glee over it, and so are the Navy officers on duty here.
All unite in saying that if any of the _Kearsage_ officers dine with
Douglass on the way to Hayti they will find themselves tabooed by
their brother officers thereafter.”—Summarised from the Washington
correspondence of the St. Louis _Republic_, October, 1889.
“We simply hate, as American citizens, to be told by our equals _de
jure_ ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.’ The blackest hands can
cook the food for prejudiced throats; the blackest, dirtiest arms can
hold the whitest, cleanest baby; the blackest, most illiterate man can
sit on the same seat, even with a lady, as a driver; but the angry
passions rise when a well-dressed, educated, refined negro pays his
own fare and seats himself quietly in a public conveyance.”—Orangeburg
_Plain Speaker_, a negro newspaper, December 4th, 1889.
“Two coloured men, respectable in appearance and well educated, the
one principal of, and the other a teacher in, a public school of the
city, entered a restaurant in Cincinnati the other day. They seated
themselves at a table, but no waiter went near them, and when they
finally asked to be served they were thrown out into the street. The
sole trouble was the fact that they were coloured.”—New York _Evening
Post_, December 31st, 1889.
“Social equality of whites and blacks is unheard of here, even in
‘black’ Republican circles. The whites don’t want it and the blacks
won’t have it. Any white person who advocates it here is quietly
ignored as an irredeemable crank, and the South can afford to keep
cool and follow Northern example regarding this deadest of dead
issues.”—New York _Herald_, November, 1889.
“Wednesday will be long remembered in Georgia as the day on which an
unparalleled number of violent crimes were committed. At Jessop a
bloody riot occurred; at Augusta there was a conflict approaching the
dimensions of a riot, accompanied by bloodshed. At Dainesville a very
worthy coloured man was, it appears, cruelly murdered; at Toombsboro
another negro was killed; and at Greenville a shooting affair
occurred.... The quarrel was in every instance between men of
different colour.”—Macon _Telegraph_, December 28th, 1889.
“A few days ago a negro minister of this city boarded the east-bound
passenger train on the E.T.V. and G. Railway, and took a seat in the
coach occupied by white passengers. Some of the passengers complained
to the conductor and brakemen, and expressed considerable
dissatisfaction that they were forced to ride alongside of a negro.
The railway officials informed the complainants that they were not
authorised to force the coloured passenger into the coach set apart
for the negroes, and they would lay themselves liable should they do
so. The white passengers then took the matter in their own hands, and
ordered the ebony-hued minister to take a seat in the next coach. He
positively refused to obey orders, whereupon the white men gave him a
sound flogging and forced him to a seat among his own colour and
equals. We learned yesterday that the vanquished preacher was unable
to fill his pulpit on account of the severe chastisement inflicted
upon him.”—Selma (Alabama) _Times_, quoted by MR. G. W. CABLE.
“There is terrible excitement here over the co-education of the races.
The Alton Board of Education has provided separate schools for
coloured children, but the negroes want their children to attend the
schools set apart for the whites. They had threatened and threatened
to force their way into the schools and put their children alongside
the whites, and flatly refused to permit their children to attend the
schoolhouses set apart for the negro children. These threats, however,
until to-day, were looked upon as idle and meaningless. This morning
the negroes took action in the matter. Scores of adult negroes,
accompanied by half a hundred black children, went to the high school
and demanded admission. Superintendent Powell is a mild-mannered man,
and offered no obstructions. The black children walked in and took
possession of all the desks they found unoccupied. The white pupils
protested, and began to pick up their books and make preparations to
leave. Some of the coloured boys grinned at the white girls, and as
soon as the negro men left the building the white pupils assaulted the
blacks. There was a hard fight for fifteen minutes, during which
books, inkstands, rulers, slates and hair filled the air. The whites
finally drove the blacks out of the room and chased them out of the
yard, and continued to fight in the street. The white girls urged
their champions on with encouraging shouts, and brought them munitions
of war when possible.”—General Press Telegram from Alton, Illinois,
January 11th, 1890.
“At Decatur, Ill., Wood Bros., purveyors of candles and ice-cream, had
no ice-cream to sell to the Rev. Edward Wilson. He was a negro. He now
arrests the purveyors by virtue of the Civil Rights Law, and ‘the case
will be hotly contested.’ Of course it will. And the jury will
discharge the confectioners. The black man will get no ice-cream. The
people of Decatur love the negro in the South, not in the North. The
Civil Rights Bill was prepared for the South, where a coloured man can
get all the ice-cream he may pay for. To apply Reconstruction to the
North—is not that oppressive? The same Northerner who will endure
arrest before he will sell ice-cream to a black man will tell you
confidently that the determination of the Southerners to prevent black
home rule is the vilest conspiracy of modern times.”—Chicago _Herald_,
September 6th, 1889.
“One hot night in September ... I was travelling by rail in the State
of Alabama. At rather late bedtime there came aboard the train a young
mother and her little daughter of three or four years. They were
neatly and tastefully dressed in cool, fresh muslins, and as the train
went on its way they sat together very still and quiet. At the next
station there came aboard a most melancholy and revolting company. In
filthy rags, with vile odours, and the clanking of shackles and
chains, nine penitentiary convicts chained to one chain, and ten more
chained to another, dragged laboriously into the compartment of the
car where in one corner sat this mother and child, and packed it full,
and the train moved on. The keeper of the convicts told me he should
take them in that car 200 miles that night. They were going to the
mines. My seat was not in that car, and I stayed in it but a moment.
It stank insufferably. I returned to my own place in the coach behind,
where there was, and had all the time been, plenty of room. But the
mother and child sat on in silence in that foul hole, the conductor
having distinctly refused them admission elsewhere because they were
of African blood, and not because the mother was, but because she was
not, engaged at the moment in menial service. Had the child been
white, and the mother not its natural but its hired guardian, she
could have sat anywhere in the train.”—MR. G. W. CABLE.
“During a day’s stay in Atlanta lately, the present writer saw many
things greatly to admire.... He feels constrained to ask whether it
must be that in the principal depôt of such a city the hopeless
excommunication of every person of African tincture from the civil
rewards of gentility must be advertised by three signs at the
entrances of three separate rooms, one for ‘Ladies,’ one for
‘Gentlemen,’ and the third a ‘Coloured Waiting-room?’ Visiting the
principal library of the city, he was eagerly assured, in response to
inquiry, that no person of colour would be allowed to draw out
books.”—MR. G. W. CABLE.
“Postmaster Lewis and Colonel A. E. Buck were hung in effigy in front
of the Court-house to-night, in the presence of probably 10,000
persons. This action was the result of Lewis appointing a negro to a
place in the Registry Department, where he would come in contact with
a white lady clerk.”—Letter from Atlanta, Georgia, of August 8th,
1889, to Charleston _News and Courier_.
“The Rev. J. Francis Robinson, a Baptist preacher of good character,
has been visiting in the City of Auburn, New York. The day after his
arrival he wished to get shaved, and went to a barber-shop, but was
refused attention. He went in succession to several other
barber-shops, but received the same treatment at each. The Rev. F. D.
Penny, pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Auburn, accompanied the
Rev. Mr. Robinson to a number of shops, and offered the proprietors a
dollar to shave his friend, but his co-operation was of no use. The
trouble was that the Rev. Mr. Robinson had a black skin, and, as one
of the barbers said, ‘I refused to shave him because it is against the
rules of the trade to shave a coloured man.’”—New York _Evening Post_,
August 6th, 1889.
“Deacon J. H. Brown, of the First African Baptist Church, of this
city, had quite an unpleasant experience at Baxley yesterday. He is on
his way, along with other coloured deacons and clergymen, to a
convention of the church at Indianapolis. Six of them entered the
white people’s coach, filled largely with ladies, and, despite the
repeated protests of the passengers, would not vacate their seats. One
passenger wired to Baxley over the signature of ‘Passenger,’ asking
for help to put the negroes out, and stating that he would make
himself known when the train arrived. When Baxley was reached a crowd
of men boarded the train and requested the negroes to leave. They
refused. This did not change their purpose, and force was then used.
In the fight that ensued two men were cut, but not very seriously. The
train pulled out quickly to prevent further disturbance, and a
physician at Lumber City was telegraphed for to meet the wounded men
there. He refused, but subsequently one was secured and the men cared
for. Brown was hurt about the head and face from blows inflicted by a
club.”—Savannah (Georgia) _Times_, September 10th, 1889.
“The colour line question has nearly caused a split in the Independent
Baptists’ Union. An organisation composed of Baptist ministers of
Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland is in session here. The Rev. H.
A. Braxton, a coloured member, objected to the use of the word
‘coloured’ in a report referring to work among his race. This
objection fired the Southern sentiment of some of the white brethren,
and a sharp discussion ensued. Preacher Braxton declared that he was
opposed to ecclesiastical bossism, and wanted the colour line buried.
Dr. A. C. Dickinson, editor of the _Religious Herald_, of Richmond,
asked: ‘Do you want us to treat you every way as if you were not
coloured?’ The Rev. Mr. Braxton replied: ‘Yes, we want to be treated
as men, and we want no special favours.’ The Rev. A. C. Dickinson
said: ‘Do you want us to bury the colour line? If so, where is it to
be buried—on the white side or on the black? The colour is there. God
put it there. Leaving out the word “coloured” won’t help it. Now, what
are you going to do about it? Do you intend to give up your convention
and your churches and join ours, or do you want us to give up ours and
join yours?’ Rev. Dr. J. W. M. Williams, one of the most prominent
Baptists in the South, said: “If you (the coloured people) don’t
intend to stop talking on this question, then, in the name of the
Lord, go by yourselves and talk all day on the question of colour. If
the coloured people see they can do their work better alone, let them
go and work by themselves.’”—General Press Telegram from Baltimore,
Maryland, October 18th, 1889.
“A delegation of citizens waited on Governor Gordon to-day, and asked
him to take action concerning the whipping of a number of negroes by
unknown white men at East Point, near Atlanta. The affair occurred
late last night. It was the outgrowth of the lynching of a negro boy
on Wednesday night for the usual crime. The negroes had a mass
meeting, and the citizens, becoming alarmed, sent for police from
Atlanta. The presence of the officers prevented further trouble, but
after they had gone a number of white men went to different cabins and
whipped the negroes, fourteen in all.”—Atlanta despatch of September
6, 1889, to Charleston _News and Courier._
A man named L. P. Smith was employed as a detective. He arrested one
Jackson, a negro, mistaking him for a murderer who was “wanted.”
Finding out his error, but desiring to secure the reward, he offered
to release Jackson if the latter would submit to have one of his ears
cut off, that ear bearing a mark similar to one on the ear of the
sought for murderer. Jackson agreed. Smith, uneasy as to what he had
done, then shot Jackson, who, however, lived long enough to make a
statement.—Summarised from a Birmingham (Alabama) despatch of
September, 1889.
The mutilated bodies of Rosmond Cormier, coloured, and his daughter
Rosalie were found in a cabin on the Abbeville Road, near Lafayette,
Louisiana. Cormier, who was sixty, had been previously whipped and
ordered by a band of “Regulators” to leave the district, but had not
complied. The “Regulators” returned, demanded admittance to the cabin,
were refused, and were fired at in self-defence by Cormier. They then
shot him and cut his daughter’s throat from ear to ear. On the same
night they very severely whipped two other negroes.—Summarised from a
New Orleans despatch of September 11th, 1889, to the Charleston _News
and Courier._
“In Fulton County, Georgia, a black boy of eighteen years was taken
from gaol and hanged for ‘assaulting’ a white girl, the assault
consisting of catching the child by the arms and running away when she
and her companion screamed. Then a pack of white ruffians, heavily
armed, went from one cabin to another in an alleged search for a
criminal, and barbarously whipped and maltreated inoffensive negroes,
who were powerless to defend themselves against shot-guns and
revolvers presented at their heads.”—_Greenville News_, September
10th, 1889.
“There are symptoms of a race war in Missouri, at Dexter.... The
people in that section have for years excluded all negroes from among
them. A short time ago a man named Williams settled on a farm there,
and engaged a dozen negroes to work for him. Fifty armed white men
waited upon him this week, and told him he must get rid of the
negroes. He said they might kill him first. The armed men returned to
town, where they are circulating a paper pledging the signers to stand
by the ‘Regulators.’”—Charleston _News and Courier_, September 14th,
1889.
“Robert Battey, a negro juror, was refused admission to the
dining-room at the Augusta Hotel yesterday. He was the only coloured
man on the jury, which was empanelled to try a criminal case in the
City Court, and when the hour of dinner arrived the case was of such
importance that Judge Eve ordered the jury to be kept together....
Upon arriving at the hotel Mr. B. S. Doolittle, the proprietor, who
is, by the way, a Northern man, refused Battey, the coloured juror,
admission to his dining-room, where a number of ladies and gentlemen
were seated at dinner. Mr. Doolittle offered to furnish the coloured
juror with his meal in another room, but Battey would not consent to
be isolated in that manner, and before he would go into the private
room he went home, where he enjoyed his usual meal in custody of an
officer. This attempted intrusion of a negro into the dining-hall of
an hotel called forth considerable comment, and Mr. Doolittle was
upheld in his refusal to serve Battey with dinner at the same table
with white people.”—Augusta (Georgia) despatch of October 4th, 1889,
to Charleston _News and Courier_
I have, perhaps, cited sufficient examples of white intolerance and
tyranny. These characteristics are, it will have been observed, not
exclusively confined to the South. I should add that, in several States,
what is known as miscegenation, or, to be plain, marriage between a
white and a black or coloured person, is illegal.
After reading what I have written and quoted, can any one fail to ask
himself these questions? Is there any doubt that there is a race problem
of infinite difficulty and danger awaiting, nay crying for, solution in
America? Is it not true that there is practically one law for the black
and another for the white in the South? Is it likely that the negro’s
civil rights will ever be respected by the Southern whites? Can
civilisation admit the claim of the South to be permitted to settle the
race question in its own way? Is it not the duty of the United States to
deal with the question? Is the position of the Southern black likely to
become more tolerable or less, under the existing system? I might insist
much more than I have done upon the negro’s unfortunate situation. I
might picture him, in all detail, as he is in the school, in the church,
and even in the graveyard—a being kept remorselessly apart from his
white fellows. But I am anxious not to be one-sided, and not to allow my
natural sympathy for the black man’s wrongs to render me blind to the
fact that the white man, too, has wrongs great and intolerable. What
these wrongs are I shall attempt to show when I deal with the position
of the Southern white. In the meanwhile I will conclude my present
division of the subject with a few notes on the sanitary, moral,
educational, and material position of the Southern negro of to-day.
As to his sanitary position I have, I regret to say, no very modern
statistics at my disposal. The latest that convey a fairly broad view of
the situation apply to the years 1883 and 1885; but there is no doubt
that things have very little changed since then. The death-rate, among
children under five years old, per 1,000 of the whole population, for
the year 1883 was—in Charleston, white 5·88, coloured 21·3; in Memphis,
white 3·75, coloured 13·91; in Nashville, white 5·65, coloured 12·44;
and in Savannah, white 7·59, coloured 18·01. The rate in 1885 was—in
Charleston, white 4·45, coloured 14·38; in Memphis, white 4·67, coloured
13·46; in Nashville, white 4·37, coloured 10·78; and in Savannah, white
4·23, coloured 13·70. Squalid dwellings, in filthy neighbourhoods,
impure air, dirty water, neglect of personal cleanliness, immorality,
extensive meat consumption without vegetable diet to match, and
gregarious and generally unsavoury habits, induce a black mortality
which, at least in the large centres, is enormous, and is particularly
noticeable under the heads of consumption, pneumonia, and scrofula.
Bearing upon this point, a paragraph from the New York _Tribune_, of
August 20th, 1889, deserves quotation:—
“As the result of extended observations, including thousands of cases,
thirty-six per cent. being negroes, and mulattoes, Dr. L. McLane
Tiffany, of Baltimore, finds some marked differences in the diseases
of whites and blacks. Thus, spinal caries is more frequently located
in the dorsal region of the negro, and a cured case of Pott’s disease
in the middleaged negro is very rare: dislocations are more frequent
in the white, as is also lateral curvature of the spine; keloid is
characteristically more frequent in the negro, likewise lipoma.
Although Dr. Tiffany has never seen an epithelioma of the lip or any
part of the face in a negro, osteo-sarcoma is often met with in the
race. In hospital cases, the negro bears operations better, as a rule,
than the white, but their reaction after accidents is not so good as
that of the latter. Dr. Tiffany concludes that surgical affections
pursue different courses in the white and coloured races under
identical hygienic surroundings; that surgical diseases involving the
lymphatic system, especially tubercular, are more fatal in negroes
than in whites; that congenital deformities are more rare in negroes
than in whites; and that surgical differences observed between negroes
and whites are due to racial peculiarities.”
Yet the excess of mortality among the coloured people, large though it
be, is more than counterbalanced by their superior fecundity. This is
very remarkable, seeing that in many cities where the whites outnumber
the blacks as two to one, the death-rate among the latter positively
exceeds that among the former. In Charleston, for example, the
death-rate in 1884 was for the whites 1 in 42, and for the coloured 1 in
22; and in 1883, for the whites 1 in 46, and for the coloured 1 in 21.
This is rendered the more striking by the fact that the poorer coloured
people in Charleston are supplied with medicines and medical attention
at the expense of the city. In 1884 no fewer than 17,950 coloured
patients were treated in the city hospital and in the different health
districts, as against only about one-third of that number of white
patients. In 1886 the Charleston death-rate was, per 1,000, for whites
20·65 and for coloured 49·01. In 1887, out of 41,000 whites in Atlanta,
Georgia, 608 died, while out of 22,000 coloured people 707 died. Again,
in the week ending March 9, 1889, the estimated population of New
Orleans was—whites, 184,500; coloured, 69,500; and the death-rate per
1,000 was—whites, 14·13; coloured, 30·03. And the story is much the same
everywhere. The negroes die like flies, and increase only because they
also breed like flies.
Their moral condition, as shown by criminal statistics and by the
testimony of competent observers, is equally unsatisfactory. Says the
Rev. Dr. Tucker, formerly of Jackson, Mississippi:—
“In all the country districts the removal of the restraints of
slavery, such as they were, has resulted in an open abandonment of
every semblance of morality and the loss almost of the idea of
marriage. Why, in one county of Mississippi, there were during twelve
months 300 marriage licences taken out in the county clerk’s office
for white people. According to the proportion of population, there
should have been in the same time 1,200 or more for negroes. There can
be no legal marriage of any sort in Mississippi without a licence.
There were actually taken out by coloured people just three!... Soon
after the war the Legislature passed an Act legalising the union of
all who were then living together, marrying them whether they wished
or not; and for years afterwards the courts were crowded with
applications for divorce from coloured people, which mostly had to be
granted, since there was ample cause for divorce under either the
Divine or the statute law. I know of whole neighbourhoods, including
hundreds of negro families, where there is not one single legally
married couple, or couple not married, who stay faithful to each other
beyond a few months, or a few years at most; often but a few weeks.
And if out of every 500 negro families one excepts a few dozen who are
legally married, this statement will hold true for millions of
coloured people. And these things I tell you to-night are but hints. I
cannot, I dare not, tell the full truth before a mixed audience.”
These words were originally spoken before the Episcopal Congress at
Richmond, Virginia, in 1882; they were subsequently published in a
pamphlet, and I am generally assured, and implicitly believe, that they
were true then and are true now. Even the negroes themselves dare not
deny them. One negro preacher published a pamphlet, in which he admitted
that—
“This speech reveals humiliating facts, so truthful, yet hard to
acknowledge. Not one of our social circles, if we can be said to have
any, is clean morally. They are full of base, downright hypocrisy and
falsehood, and full two-thirds of the whole are members of the
churches. Moral character is not the standard. Crimes that should
cause a blush on fair cheeks assume a front of brass, and defy you to
speak of or talk about them.... A coloured man, only a few days ago,
contended with me that the negroes were right in certain of their
practices, because the Lord Jesus himself said that ‘Seven women
should lay hold of one man.’”
Such was the confession of the Rev. Isaac Williams, with whom four other
negro preachers fully concurred, adding—
“Our acquaintance extends over seven to ten thousand coloured people,
concerning whose lives we know the truth, and that truth is set forth
in Dr. Tucker’s speech without exaggeration. There are exceptions, but
the general truth is stated exactly as it is. We agree also that he
has only given hints as regards many things of such a nature that only
hints are possible.”
On this repulsive subject I also have said enough. Nor will I say much
concerning the degrading superstitions and superstitious practices of
the great mass of ignorant blacks. Two years ago the _Herald_, a
respectable paper in Boston, published an article five and a half
columns long, the object of which was to demonstrate that Voodooism
existed to an alarming extent among the coloured people of Boston and
New England generally. Here are a couple of extracts:—
“No people are so prone by nature and force of circumstances to
superstition as the blacks. Devout and easily excited, they are apt to
accept, blindly and without reasoning, the traditions of their
fathers; and even among those of reasonable education there are traces
of the idolatrous creeds and customs which have always characterised
the West India Negroes. Voodooism, of which much has been hinted, a
little written, but almost nothing known—one of the blackest, crudest,
and most heathenish forms of idolatry the world has ever seen—exists
to-day to an alarming extent right here in Puritan New England.”
“Perhaps the fact that the negroes have always regarded themselves as
a wronged people impels them to cultivate a revengeful spirit; and the
prevailing object of their so-called spells is in the direction of
working harm to their enemies. They pay more attention to vengeance
than to the cure of diseases, although claiming wonderful power from
their herbs and decoctions. The prevailing sentiment, if it may be so
termed, of Voodooism, aside from idolatry, is revenge, and in their
hatreds these people are implacable. No punishment is too horrible to
be visited upon their enemies.”
Most white Bostonians believed that the article was full of
exaggerations, but, to the general surprise, the negroes practically
admitted the impeachment.
Here is part of a resolution which was passed in July, 1889, by the
Coloured National League sitting at Boston:—
“Whereas the Boston _Herald_ has lately shown that the degrading
superstition of Voodooism, as well as its practice, exists here in
Boston to some extent among a few illiterate and ignorant persons of
our race; and whereas the sentiment among the better class of coloured
people is that no one should be swifter to condemn any kind of foolish
race superstition or disreputable practice than the coloured people
themselves; and whereas it should everywhere be the aim and desire of
the coloured people to welcome any information that may show the need
of greater race enlightenment, or that shall stir us up to more
earnest efforts for the general elevation of our people; be it
resolved that the League places itself on record as being both anxious
and willing to strike hands with the _Herald_, or any one else, in
condemning, discountenancing, and stamping out Voodooism or any other
‘ism’ hurtful to the physical, moral, or spiritual elevation of the
coloured people; and that the League calls upon good coloured people
everywhere to set their face like a flint against every kind or evil
superstition, habit, practice, custom, or belief, whose tendency, if
encouraged, might be to degrade, belittle, or harm the coloured people
in public estimation.”
I may add that, not perhaps at Boston, but certainly in the South, and
especially in Louisiana, Voodooism exists to-day. I pass on to criminal
statistics as they concern the negro.
I will first take some suggestive statistics concerning the State of
Mississippi, one of the “blackest” States in the Union, the population,
according to the Census of 1880, having been—white, 479,398; coloured,
650,291. In the State Penitentiary on December 1, 1885, there were 103
white and 676 coloured males. Of the coloured people 113 were mulattoes,
and the total number of coloured criminals in Mississippi in 1885 would
be still further augmented if the number of judicial and irregular
executions could be ascertained. As it is, it is clear that an unduly
large proportion of criminality is furnished by the negro and negroid
population. Mr. H. S. Fulkerson, who has written an interesting pamphlet
on “The Negro” (Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1887), was induced by these
startling figures to go further into the subject, and to examine the
gaol register of Vicksburg, Mississippi, from March 1st, 1886, to
February 28th, 1887. He found the commitments for the year to have been
446, as many as 426 of the prisoners being coloured, and only 20 white.
The population of Vicksburg in 1880 was—whites 5,975; coloured, 5,836.
He also examined, for the same period, the register of Vicksburg
Workhouse, an institution in which violators of the city ordinances,
&c., are confined. Of 1,416 persons committed 992 were coloured and 424
white. In 1889, in Charleston, 2,202 coloured persons were arrested, as
against only 1,250 whites. Most of the arrests during the year were made
for the following offences:
────────────────────┬─────────┬─────────
│ Whites. │Coloured.
────────────────────┼─────────┼─────────
Disorderly conduct │ 160│ 518
Drunk │ 248│ 165
Drunk and disorderly│ 242│ 291
────────────────────┼─────────┼─────────
Total │ 650│ 974
────────────────────┴─────────┴─────────
And here, to put the matter in a nutshell, are the relative proportions,
as gathered from the United States Census of Prisoners, of black to
white criminality in half a dozen States:—Massachusetts, 2¾ to 1;
Indiana, 6¼; to 1; Illinois, 2·4 to 1; Tennessee, 5 to 1; South
Carolina, 6¾ to 1; and Georgia, 7·8 to 1. Thus in Tennessee the coloured
man is five times as prone to criminality as the white, and in Georgia
nearly eight times. And it must be borne in mind that these figures deal
only with that portion of the total criminality which finds its way into
prison. They do not, and no official figures can, take into account the
criminality which is summarily punished by the operation of lynch law;
and every one who knows the South knows also that, out of every fifty
persons who are lynched there, at least forty-nine are of coloured
complexion. Of lynching, however, I shall speak later, for it is mainly
reserved as a punishment for one particular crime, the prevalence of
which has a most important bearing upon the position of the Southern
white.
Educationally, the coloured man has undoubtedly made great progress
since his emancipation. In the slavery days ignorance was imposed by law
upon the slave. Says the South Carolinian statute of 1834:—“If any
person shall hereafter teach any slave to read or write, or procure any
slave to be taught to read or write, such person, if a free white
person, shall be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars for each
offence and imprisonment not less than six months; or, if a free person
of colour, shall be whipped not exceeding fifty lashes and fined not
exceeding fifty dollars; and, if a slave, shall be whipped at the
discretion of the Court not exceeding fifty lashes; the informer to be
entitled to one-half the fine and to be a competent witness.” And up to
the day of emancipation the slave was, with scarcely an exception, kept
in the densest ignorance. From the close of the war to the taking of the
tenth census only fifteen years elapsed. In that period the adult negro
had not greatly advanced, but the negro youth had made an amount of
progress which, though by no means startling, was, I think, distinctly
encouraging. The following table shows (1) the illiteracy of the male
adult negro, and (2) the illiteracy of the whole negro population of the
Black Belt in 1880:—
──────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────
│ Total │ Illiterate │ Total │ Total
│ Coloured │ Coloured │ Coloured │ Coloured
│Male Adults.│Male Adults.│Population. │Illiterates.
──────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────
Virginia │ 128,257│ 100,210│ 631,707│ 315,660
North Carolina│ 105,018│ 80,282│ 532,505│ 271,943
South Carolina│ 118,889│ 93,010│ 604,472│ 310,071
Georgia │ 143,471│ 116,516│ 725,274│ 391,482
Florida │ 27,489│ 19,110│ 126,838│ 60,420
Alabama │ 118,423│ 96,408│ 600,320│ 321,680
Mississippi │ 130,278│ 99,068│ 652,199│ 319,753
Louisiana │ 107,977│ 86,555│ 484,992│ 259,429
──────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────
│ 879,802│ 691,159│ 4,358,357│ 2,250,438
──────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────
Thus, while the proportion of male adults who could read and write was,
roughly speaking, only one in four, the proportion of coloured people of
all ages was one in two. I have been informed at Washington that the
eleventh census is likely to show that in these States seven coloured
people out of every ten have escaped the imputation of illiteracy; but
at the same time I have been warned that “writing” necessarily implies
nothing more than ability to laboriously trace a signature, and that
“reading” does not involve the ability to mark, learn, and inwardly
digest anything more abstruse than a sentence in monosyllables. As Judge
Tourgée has said:—
“One of the encouraging phases of the present situation is the fact
that a coloured man is proud of the distinction of being able to read
and write. It is to him a sort of patent of nobility. It shows to the
world that he has gone above the level, that he has come up above the
mass of his fellows, and is worthy of distinction and consideration in
this respect if in no other. Because of these facts the statistics of
illiteracy among the coloured people are peculiarly unreliable.”
We may accept them as such, and yet regard them as encouraging. The
level of education is rising. It has not risen high, and the number of
negroes who possess such an education as is the property of a senior boy
at a London Board School may probably, even now, not mount to six
figures. But there is promise in the fact that the race supplies for its
own improvement over 16,000 school teachers. An educated negro has
supplied some statistics on the subject of coloured education in the
South:—
“In 1887–88,” he writes, “there were 15,000 public schools, having
1,118,556 pupils; 16 normal schools, 119 teachers and 3,924 pupils,
with property valued at $992,350; 31 schools for secondary
instruction, 247 teachers, with 6,555 students, and property valued at
$843,100; 11 colleges of arts and sciences, 79 teachers, 922 students,
and property valued at $1,443,000; two schools of science, 29
teachers, 840 students, and property valued at $50,000; 16 theological
schools, 77 teachers, 833 students, and $489,500 in property; 4 law
schools, 16 teachers, 81 students, and $40,000 in property; 3 schools
of medicine, 48 teachers, 165 students, and $80,000 in property; while
there were 2,081 pupils in schools for the blind and dumb, making a
total of 16,430 teachers, 1,139,904 pupils, and $3,934,950 in school
property.”
Unfortunately there are no symptoms whatever that the spread of
education among the negroes is causing, or ever will cause, the
diminution of white prejudice against the race.
Concerning the material position of the negroes opinions vary greatly.
There is no doubt, however, that they are gradually acquiring property,
and, in a few cases, accumulating capital. It was recently declared that
coloured people owned a million acres of land in Texas alone, paying
taxes there on twenty million dollars’ worth of property, and there were
in the State twenty-five coloured lawyers, one hundred coloured
merchants, five thousand coloured mechanics, and fifteen newspapers
conducted by coloured people. Somewhat similar statements have been
made, by negro speakers and writers chiefly, concerning the progress of
the race elsewhere. Says one journal:—
“Georgia’s coloured people are making a good record for thrift and
industry. In 1879 their property was valued at $5,182,398; but in 1887
the valuation was $8,939,479, showing a gain of 72½ per cent. during
the nine years. In the same time the valuation of white men’s property
had risen from $229,777,150 to $332,565,442, a gain of only 44·6 per
cent. approximately. These figures simply prove what the intelligent
representatives of the negro race have said about the progress made,
and go to illustrate anew that the negroes are working out their own
future. The richest coloured woman in the South, Mrs. Amanda Ewas, who
has a snug fortune of $400,000, lives in Atlanta.”
On the other hand, the Charleston _News and Courier_ points out that in
Charleston the negroes stand just where they did in 1860; that the value
of the property held by them to-day is just about the same as that held
by the free negroes twenty-eight years ago, and that, strange to say,
the coloured property holders are of the same class as in 1860, namely,
the descendants of negroes who were free before the war.
I have had an opportunity of examining the assessment rolls of Chatham
County, in which the city of Savannah, Georgia, is situated. These, as
compiled in the summer of 1889, give the following results:—
────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────
│Population. │ Property. │Property per
│ │ │ Head.
────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────
Whites │ 17,494│$126,420,780│ $1,510
Coloured│ 27,515│ 571,450│ 21
────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────
The negroes and coloured people, therefore, who constitute 61 per cent.
of the local population, hold only 2 per cent. of the local wealth.
On the same subject the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_ says:—
“We doubt whether the value of property held by coloured men in New
Orleans is any greater to-day than that held by the freedmen of colour
in 1860, and yet both in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana the
negro has been improving his condition steadily. It takes more than
one generation, however, to raise a race held in bonds of slavery to
the condition of property holders. When the hundreds of millions of
dollars that have been paid the negroes in wages and the millions
wasted by them in the veriest trash are considered, it seems strange
that so few dollars have been invested in land, houses, or any
permanent property. The freedmen of colour who inherited land or
houses have held on to them, or at least to a portion of them. The
negroes engaged in any very profitable trade or business may have laid
aside something and own some little property, but the great majority
of the race, who are simply farm hands, labourers, or domestic
servants, have acquired no permanent property of any kind.”
As a further illustration of the relative status of blacks and whites in
what may be regarded as a representative section of the Black Belt, I
append some interesting and detailed official statistics of Richmond
County, Georgia, a county which had a total population in 1870 of
25,724, and in 1880 of 34,665, and which is one of the most populous and
well-to-do counties in the State. In it, moreover, the races are almost
equally divided.
Polls for 1889—White 5,069, coloured 4,029; total 9,098. Polls for
1888—White 4,923, coloured 3,844; total 8,767—an increase of 331.
Lawyers in 1889—White 50, coloured 1; total 51. Lawyers in 1888—White
48, coloured 1; total 49—an increase of 2.
Doctors in 1889—White 53, coloured 1. In 1888—White 46, coloured 2—an
increase of 6.
Dentists in 1889—White 11, coloured 1; and the same for 1888.
Acres of land owned in 1889—White 180,332, coloured 4,943; total
185,275. Acres in 1888—White 180,835¼, coloured 4,661; total
185,496¼—a decrease of 221¼ acres.
Aggregate value of land in 1889—White $1,571,550, coloured $64,440;
total $1,638,990. In 1888—White $1,619,720, coloured $66,810; total
$1,686,530—a decrease of $47,540.
Aggregate value of city or town property in 1889—White $9,713,140,
coloured $438,940; total $10,152,080. In 1888—white $9,364,150,
coloured $416,620; total $9,980,770—an increase of $371,310.
The number of shares in State or national banks is the same for 1888
and 1889, and is 20,300, and they are all owned by the whites.
The value of shares of such bank stock for 1889 is returned at
$887,000, and for 1888 was returned at $1,002,000, showing a decrease
of $115,000.
Property owned by gas or electric light companies is all owned by
whites, and is valued in 1889 at $203,840, and for 1888 was returned
at $215,250, showing a decrease of $11,410.
Amount of money and solvent debts, notes, accounts, etc., for
1889—whites $1,358,890, coloured $150; total $1,359,040. In
1888—whites $1,491,630, coloured $150; total $1,491,780—a decrease of
$132,740.
Merchandise of every sort for 1889—whites $1,260,550, coloured $5,730;
total $1,266,280. In 1888—whites $1,278,290, coloured $5,680; total
$1,283,970—a decrease of $17,690.
The capital invested in shipping and tonnage is all white, and for
1889 is $16,200. In 1888 it was $27,620—a decrease of $11,420.
Stocks and bonds are all white, and for 1889 are returned at
$1,209,120, and for 1888 at $1,400,630, showing a decrease of
$191,510.
Cotton manufactories are all white, and are returned for 1889 at
$4,023,300, against $3,946,000 for 1888—an increase of $77,300.
Iron works, foundries, etc., are all white, and are returned for 1889
at $33,500, against $35,500, showing a decrease of $2,000.
Value of household and kitchen furniture, pianos, organs, etc., for
1889—White $570,690, coloured $17,990; total $588,680. In 1888—White
$550,300, coloured $14,490; total $564,790—an increase of $23,890.
Watches, silver plate, and jewellery for 1880—White $74,020, coloured
$50; total $74,070. In 1888—White $77,950, coloured $50; total
$78,000—a decrease of $3,930.
Horses, mules, hogs, sheep, cattle, etc., for 1889—White $200,140,
coloured $12,820; total $212,960. In 1888—White $199,430, coloured
$13,580; total $213,016—a decrease of $50.
Plantation and mechanical tools, law or other library books, pictures,
etc., are all returned by whites, and for 1889 are $63,100, against
$71,650 for 1888, showing a decrease of $8,550.
Cotton, corn, crops, and provisions held for sale on April 1st are all
white, and are returned for $350 in 1889 and $2,000 in 1888, showing a
decrease of $1,650.
Value of all other property not before enumerated for 1889—White
$405,170, coloured $4,440; total $409,610. In 1888—White $343,430,
coloured $3,960; total $357,390—an increase of $52,220.
Aggregate value of whole property in 1889—White $21,590,560, coloured
$547,560; total $22,138,120. In 1888—White $21,635,550, coloured
$521,340; total $22,156,890—an aggregated decrease of $18,770.
In view of facts like these, it is hard to know what to make of the
favourite negro declaration that the coloured people will, in the not
distant future, be as powerful in the South in the matter of wealth as
they already are in the matter of numbers. I believe, nevertheless, that
it may be accepted that the material improvement in the coloured man’s
condition is more noticeable than his improvement in any other
direction. He lives more comfortably and dresses better than he did
eight or ten years ago; and, as his main ambitions are physical and
material rather than intellectual and æsthetic, he is entitled to
congratulate himself.
The general progress of the negro does not, however, satisfy those who
once cherished the highest hopes on his behalf. Here is a suggestive,
and, as I happen to know, a true paragraph, dated Atlanta, Georgia, June
1, 1889, which I clip from a Southern newspaper:—
“A celebrated English philanthropist was buried here yesterday, having
died at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. Booth. John Glazebrook was
his name, and he was a citizen of Manchester, England. He was a man of
great wealth, and becoming interested in the abolition of slavery in
the United States, spent thousands of pounds in aiding the agitation.
He paid the expenses of lecturers, had runaway slaves exhibited before
English audiences, and placed his fortune in the scales to accomplish
the abolition of human servitude. A few months ago he decided to visit
this country for the purpose of seeing whether the negro had improved.
He died with the declaration that he had wasted his money, and that
freedom had brought no benefit to the negro.”